Factor in old and new friends, a ride in a magic bus, a few quiet moments with an old Hesketh, a blitz through the Alleghenies in a good car and a plateful of Bluepoint oysters.

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For some reason, I never sleep well before a big road trip, probably because the night always seems like one big lost opportunity to make tracks. With impatience comes adrenaline. And so it was last Wednesday. I set my alarm clock for 6 a.m., but my eyelids popped open in Christopher Lee/Dracula fashion at exactly 4 a.m., so I simply got up and hit the road.

Long before the first hint of rosy-fingered dawn appeared in the east, I was out of Wisconsin and halfway across Illinois, eating a truck-stop apple fritter the size of a catcher's mitt and downing a 16-oz. coffee. It felt good to be on the road, even if the trip wasn't unfolding exactly as planned.

Seven or eight months ago, you see, Barb and I had been invited to attend the Fairfield County Concours d'Elegance in Westport, Connecticut, and we'd decided it might make a fun road trip. Old friends such as Tom Cotter and Rich and Jean Taylor were slated to attend, and the organizers also said they'd like to have me there as "featured artist."

Now, I can't paint or sculpt to save my life, so apparently writing had finally broken through the glass ceiling and become a bona fide art. I therefore felt a duty to represent artless downtrodden typists everywhere by showing up.

Also, they wanted to present me with an award for being The Oldest Living Person to Have Built a 948 Sprite Engine on His Kitchen Table and Carried it Down a Flight of Stairs Right Before Going to the Hospital with Intense Back Pain That Would Persist Forever.
Actually, that wasn't the exact wording. It was a "Sharing the Passion" award, but the idea was about the same. If we live long enough and suffer greatly from our own stupidity, someone finally notices.

But a more intelligent gentleman, McKeel Hagerty, CEO of Hagerty Insurance, was also getting the same award, and I was glad to hear it. McKeel has worked hard to promote the preservation of vintage cars—as well as my own peace of mind. Every time I spill gasoline all over my workshop floor just as the propane furnace kicks in, I thank God for the Hagerty policy on my '34 Ford as I run from the garage and hide behind a tree. Also, I've taken to scoffing at tornado warnings.

Yet another incentive for driving 1100 miles to Westport was that Barb and I had never seen Connecticut. We'd traveled quite a bit around New York and New England, but had somehow missed that particular slice of the East Coast. I knew Connecticut mostly as the home of such luminaries as the late Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, David Letterman and Martha Stewart, so I imagined it as sort of a Country Living Zone for people who had so much money they'd been asked to leave Manhattan so as not to embarrass the Trumps.

But it also seemed to be a refuge for those who simply liked sports car roads and garage space. The whole state was a virtual hotbed of automotive enthusiasm, full of restoration shops, retired race drivers, etc., and half the car nuts I knew lived in Connecticut. Might be fun to check it out.

Unfortunately, our old cat Swanky became very ill just a few days before we left and Barb couldn't bring herself to leave. So it was suddenly a solo trip for me. We'd originally planned to drive our own Cadillac DTS, but it turned out Cadillac was one of the sponsors of the Concours, and they offered me a loaner for the trip.

To take advantage of this car, I blasted across the flatter portions of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio on the Interstate that first long day, landing in Clarion, Pennsylvania, at sunset. In the morning, I headed into the hinterlands on two-lane Route 6, which swings in a wide arc through the Alle-ghenies north of I-80. Small towns, twisting roads, forests. It rained all day, but the pockets of cotton-white fog in the valleys only seemed to make the mountains more beautiful.

And the CTS-V was the next best thing to a superbike for getting around slow traffic in the short passing zones between curves. At cruising rpm, the Cadillac had excellent torque, but when you put your foot in it the supercharger had you shrieking up the road like an F1 car. With the thrum of that engine and the hiss of tires in the rain-slick mountains, I felt like Jean-Louis Trintignant in A Man and a Woman, though perhaps 2 or 3 percent less handsome. I searched for Samba music on my XM radio.

Nightfall found me in a motel on the Delaware River, and the next morning I swung northeast on I-84, descending toward the Connecticut coast on Highway 7. The area was pretty much as I'd imagined it, full of beautiful old Colonial homes, twisting lanes, big trees, charming villages and a coastline with two of my favorite things in abundance—oysters on menus and sailboats in harbors.

I checked into the Doubletree Hotel in Norwalk and that evening Concours President John Shuck invited me to a dinner for judges and guests at the bayside home of Bill Scheffler, chairman of the event, and his wife, Ann. No more Red Bull and Honey Roasted Peanuts at a toll road oasis for this dude. We had wine and real food, and the garage was full of great cars. I'd crossed the desert and was safely at Ft. Scheffler.

Early the next morning, I released myself onto the green fields of the Fairfield County Hunt Club and began prowling the concours. Packards, Cadillacs, Hemi-powered Chryslers, Porsches and Jags—especially E-Types, to celebrate their 50th anniversary.

I spent much time looking at E-Types, but then found my favorite vehicle of the show. It was a 1963 BMC-Marshall service bus owned by Wayne Carini, the man who hosts Chasing Classic Cars on HD Theater. The diesel bus, wrapped in Union Jack paint with a tail-finned body designed by Pinin Farina, was once used by BMC in the U.S. to carry training materials and technical displays to dealerships. It looked like a Triumph Herald metamorphosed into a bus.

Wayne was about to leave for the afternoon road rally, organized by Rich and Jean Taylor, and I asked if I could ride with him. He said yes, and photographer Ed Hyman went with us. He was soon shooting photos out the panoramic windows and singing Magical Mystery Tour. We scooped up two more magical tourists when the Mercedes 190 of George and Martina Gates quit running and pulled off the road. Wayne expertly diagnosed their problem as fuel starvation from gas tank debris, and got the Mercedes running well enough to load it on the chase trailer.

Returning to the concours, we were all handed glasses of champagne to celebrate our finish, and I found myself wandering over to the F1 car display nearby, only to discover the old Hesketh 308C driven by James Hunt in 1975. Oddly, I'd just spent the previous evening reading a new Hunt biography by Tom Rubython, and was on the very chapter describing the development of this car by Dr. Harvey Postlethwaite. So, naturally, I had to have myself photographed crouching next to it, champagne glass in hand. It seemed like the right thing to do. Team Hesketh almost single-handedly reinvented high living on the F1 trail.

Speaking of which, on Sunday evening after the concours, a group of us got together for a little farewell dinner at a seafood restaurant on the coast in Norwalk. Clam chowder and oysters, with a window looking out on a bay full of sailboats. A nice finish to the weekend.
Sometimes, as we "mature," it's hard to remember exactly why we travel long distances to a car show or concours. After a lifetime of looking at cars, are we really going to be entertained or amazed by seeing yet another E-Type, 550 Spyder, Fleetwood, Testa Rossa, Gullwing or Bugatti?

Happily—or perhaps pathetically—the answer always turns out to be "Yes."

Factor in old and new friends, a ride in a magic bus, a few quiet moments with an old Hesketh, a blitz through the Alleghenies in a good car and a plateful of Bluepoint oysters, and all doubt is removed. It also helps to hear from home that your cat is recovering nicely.